Young and old, leading together

In 1995, Vietnam looked almost exactly like Pakistan does today. Its median age was 22, and nearly two in three of its people were under 30. One generation later its median age is 35. Along the way it did something we have not: output per worker roughly quadrupled between 1990 and 2019.

Most commentary stops at that comparison. I want to go further. Pakistan has two demographic gifts, a young workforce and a growing number of healthy older people, and its biggest gain may come from bringing them together.

Economists call the first the demographic dividend: a young population that can work, save and invest. For us it is still a possibility, not a promise. Over three decades our workforce more than doubled, from about 28 million to 63 million, while output per worker rose by only half. Bangladesh's rose by one and a half times and China's grew more than fivefold. We have added workers, not output per worker.

The reasons are no secret. The World Bank estimates that a child born in Pakistan today will grow up only 41 per cent as productive as she could be with full education and good health. Nearly four in five ten-year-olds cannot read a simple text. Forty-five per cent of young women are not in work, education or training, against 13 per cent of young men. Being young is not an achievement. Becoming productive and capable is.

A second dividend gets far less attention. Eight in ten Pakistanis now live to 60. Someone who reaches 60 can expect about 17 more years. The number of Pakistanis aged 60 and over will double, from about 18 million today to 37 million by 2050. Yet we still treat older people as a burden and overlook what they can do: 43 per cent of men over 60 are still working, mostly informally.

Our policies have not caught up. Public servants still retire at 60. Pakistan should raise the retirement age step by step, and allow phased retirement, so people can move into advisory and mentoring roles instead of falling off a cliff at 60. The usual worry, that older workers take jobs from the young, does not hold up: a 12-country study found no such effect. Retiring from a job need not mean retiring from society.

Health is the other half of this. According to the World Health Organization, a 60-year-old in China can expect about 16 healthy years ahead. In Pakistan it is twelve and a half. Closing that gap would add almost four healthy years after 60. That is the longevity dividend, and it is built by how we treat today's young workers, who are tomorrow's older ones.

Which brings me to a third dividend, the one I believe matters most. Part of our productivity gap is a management gap, and management is learnt mostly on the job, from people who have done it. What if we deliberately brought the young and old together? The young bring speed, digital fluency and an appetite to experiment. The experienced bring judgement, institutional memory and the lessons of past crises. Neither is enough alone.

I call the gain from combining them the intergenerational leadership dividend: the experience of one generation becoming the leadership capital of the next. It does not mean elders clinging to power, or the young waiting their turn. It means partnerships in which both learn.

Most organisations plan succession; few plan the transfer of judgement. Engro recently showed how to do it on purpose. In September its board named Junaid Iqbal, who has a background in technology and finance, as its next chief executive. Until April 2027 he will work alongside the current CEO, Ahsan Zafar Syed, who will then move on to counsel the chairman of Engro Holdings. Succession hands over positions. Working side by side is how judgement passes on.

Such design is rare. An OECD report notes that 83 per cent of executives see a multigenerational workforce as key to success, yet fewer than five per cent of employers do anything concrete about it.

The deeper prize is character. Competence tells us what a leader can do; character tells us what a leader will choose to do. Research shows that leaders who had an ethical mentor during their career are rated as more ethical by their own staff, while distant top executives make no detectable difference. A study of 195 departments found that ethics travels through the supervisors people work beside every day. Character is caught as well as taught, and pairing generations is how it is caught. None of this assumes the old are more virtuous. In fact, the young are often better at questioning compromises their elders have learnt to live with.

What would this take? Government's part is clear: early learning, women's work, health and gradual retirement reform, along with a handover period for senior public appointments and paid mentoring roles for retiring officers. Employers need no new law. Every leader can support one young colleague's growth this year, keep one experienced colleague whose knowledge the organisation cannot afford to lose, and make room for the two to think through hard decisions together.

For decades we have spoken of our youth bulge as though youth itself were the asset. Our real asset is what passes between generations. The greatest dividend of longer, healthier lives may not be the extra years we gain for ourselves, but the leadership capital we pass on to those who follow. A nation that learns to hand down its judgement and its conscience, and not just its offices, will build institutions that outlast every one of us.